Joe Rogan Experience #2556 - Siddharth Kara
Researcher Siddharth Kara joins Joe Rogan to expose how cobalt and lithium mining in the Congo relies on roughly 300,000 people, including 30,000 children, working in conditions of modern slavery.
The gist
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Around 300,000 miners, 37% in outright slavery conditions, dig battery metals by hand in the Congo, with 30,000 of them being children.
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Water near these mines contains heavy metals at 10 to 950 times WHO safety limits, and the region has lost 40 to 60% of its forest cover.
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Kara argues the term artisanal mining is used deliberately to hide that families, including mothers with infants, are digging in toxic pits for survival wages.
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Kara says the current cobalt supply chain mirrors the Atlantic slave trade in geography, method, and purpose, suggesting slavery evolved rather than ended.
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